Cooking Thursday evening dinner for the valets required dipping chicken breasts in flour, some of which got spilled. By the end of dinner, the spill had spread across the counter in a pattern which looks suspiciously like the paw prints of a certain Spider Cat.

Friday, March 23, 2007

The latest news on the massive cat food recall is that the food may have been contaminated with rat poison. Now obviously, rat poison isn't something you want anywhere near anything intended for human or animal consumption, and in fact this particular stuff is apparently illegal in the US. The most likely source is reportedly wheat imported from China.

Survival rates for animals affected by the food appear to be about 50%. Our thoughts are with all the animals and their humans for whom this is a very personal crisis.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

I'm taking a few days off between jobs, that gives me a chance to watch the boys in action while Katherine works.

Or inaction, as the case may be.

At one point Wednesday, Whitey was throughly crashed on Katherine's office futon, with Billy napping on a sunlit chair in the bedroom. They were both happy comfortable cats that were not generating news to post, but except to say we are doing something right.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Emily used to curl up on my chest and nap while I was working on my futon. The boys don't do that, which is good because they are much bigger. I wouldn't be able to breathe.

Instead, they tend to crawl into the cave underneath my knees. Which is nice and toasty warm, so they relax and go to sleep. So far so good. The problem arises when I get up. Then, as happened today, a warm, relaxed kitten (Billy, in this case) stretches out into the nice warm spot I made. Ten minutes later, when I'm ready to sit down again, there are 13.5 pounds of completely relaxed cat in my spot. Maybe I needed to do a little more work on the computer after all...

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Actually he can hop up to the stairwell newel post if he takes his time. However, ever since we put the watchtower next to the newel post, Billy tend more or less leaps up the watch tower and then over to the newel post.

As an extension of this, Billy has picked up the habit of going up stairs via a running start down the hall next to the stairs to mount the watchtower, turning around on the newel post, and leaping almost to the landing on the stairs. All this at full speed, which means our nine inch high cat beats the 64 inch high human up the stairs easily.

The next time Billy tried his normal route up the stairs, he aimed for the newel post directly. But he didn't get the height he needed, so he bounced off the railing, and crashed to the carpeted floor. He picked himself up, then proceeded upstairs anyway, no worse for wear.